


just fire in your eyes (the reason why we fight to stay alive)

by OsleyaKomWonkru



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Breathplay, Choice vs Free Will, Emotional Manipulation, Episode: s07e09 The Flock, F/M, Gen, Hope is the Most Important Person in Octavia's Life, Levitt Does the Right Thing, Levitt Meets Blodreina, Not a ship fic, Octavia Reclaims Her Agency, Octavia becomes the Girl Under the Floor Again, Post-Episode: s07e09 The Flock, Psychological Manipulation, Sex as a Weapon, To Give Hope Hope, mentions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:09:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25382872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OsleyaKomWonkru/pseuds/OsleyaKomWonkru
Summary: After Hope's sentence is handed down, Octavia waits for Levitt to come to her quarters.He always came.But this time was going to be different. This time wasn't about temptation, this time was about answers. About the truth.Octavia needs to protect her family. Levitt is not a part of that family. Either he proves his loyalty to her and helps her save Hope, or he's no good to her.The time for games is over.
Relationships: Octavia Blake & Hope Diyoza, Octavia Blake/Levitt
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	just fire in your eyes (the reason why we fight to stay alive)

**Author's Note:**

> I know I have a dozen and a half WIPs, as well as promptfills I need to finish, but after last episode, this fic needed to be written.
> 
> Note: I am not a Levtavia shipper. If you are, this might not be the fic for you. This fic is a deconstruction of the relationship more than anything else, because it is extremely problematic as we've seen it so far, so I hope that this can somehow be addressed in canon, but if it isn't, well, here's this fic.

They were released to quarters not long after Hope had been dragged off screaming, and it took all of the mental strength Octavia had left to maintain her composure as she marched out the door with the others, headed towards the residential section of the compound.

She hoped no one had caught her brief arm swing out of sync to brush against Diyoza’s hand in front of her. Or the out of sync response in kind that came from Diyoza a few steps later. It was the most comfort they could give each other right now. The most they could do if they wanted to have any chance of continuing to protect Hope.

Octavia prayed that Echo knew what she was doing.

Once she was alone in her quarters, Octavia let out a long breath, squeezing her eyes tight to avoid letting tears fall. She knew she was being watched. It wasn’t safe to cry, not here, not anywhere, but she knew she was about to burst.

Hiding in plain sight was the only option.

She stripped off her clothes, unbraided her hair and stepped into her shower, letting the hot water run over her face, keeping her expression passive even as the tears began to flow, tasting the salt of them dripping into her mouth.

_Was this how Bell felt when he exiled me?_ Octavia wondered. _No. Can’t have been. He had other options. If there had been other options besides each of us dying alone on Skyring, we would have taken them. But there aren’t. This was the only thing that would save her, and the first thing I’m going to do when we get out of this is hug her tight and tell her how much I love her and how sorry I am and beg her for forgiveness. I just hope Clarke gets here soon so we can end this damn charade for once and for all and go home._

But where was home? Wherever her family was. And they needed her to keep it together now more than ever. So Octavia took some more deep breaths, letting her tears subside and scrubbing the day off of her. When she was done and sure that her face was clear, she stepped out of the shower and dried off, slipping into some Bardo sleepwear that she was sure would be coming off soon enough anyway, but the pretense had to be there.

She knew Levitt would come eventually. He always did. 

Octavia took a seat on the floor in the middle of the room, closing her eyes and settling into a steady breathing cycle. 

To anyone watching, it would appear that she was meditating, practicing the Shepherd’s exercises or some bullshit like that. But like everything else in her life these past months, it was an act. And tonight would have to be the biggest act of all. It was time to put on a face she hadn’t worn in years, because she needed answers.

And Levitt was going to give them to her.

He’d been kind to her from the moment they’d met, but she wasn’t stupid. Especially since immersing themselves in Bardo’s emotionless world, Octavia was acutely aware of how off-script he was from what he should have been. What she wasn’t sure of was if he was trying to con her on behalf of Bardo or hero worshiping her on behalf of himself, but neither was a good position to be in.

For him.

As much as she was sure that Echo or Diyoza would - if they could - whisper to her about the dangers of getting involved with him, she made sure that any encounter they had held more risk for him than it did for her.

She never went to him. She never asked him for help. If he offered it, she took it. That, if asked, she could say was simply taking advice from a Level 11. That she trusted he knew what was right and that she was learning from her superiors. The Disciples didn’t punish ignorance, or mistakes, they punished not learning from them. That was at least one advantage of this world.

As for the sex, well, Levitt stood to lose more from that than she did. She’d kissed him first, that first time, yes. But he kissed her back. She’d tempted him, and he jumped in hook, line and sinker. He was eager and trusting and _open_ in that innocent way that someone new to sex was. For someone who grew up in a world without it, without emotional bonds, without intimate touch - if he _was_ tasked to get close to her on behalf of Bardo, he’d gone far beyond the call of duty and made some fatal errors along the way.

She was confident that if they were thrown into a fear simulation, that she’d drive a knife through his heart sooner than he’d be able to do the same to her.

Was Octavia passing fond of him? Sure, but she knew it had been designed that way. Designed so that the lost little girl part of her relished the worship, delighted in knowing that there was someone in the universe who at least paid lip service to her life’s accomplishments. But she wasn’t that lost little girl anymore. Nor was she that broken young woman who had debased herself in her brother’s presence to beg for his love, not knowing that she’d healed from those wounds years earlier.

She was strong. She was powerful. She knew her worth. She knew what - and more importantly, _who_ \- she was fighting for. She may have lost her brother, but he wasn’t the sum total of her family anymore. She wasn’t alone in the universe.

Echo was playing her role. Now Octavia had to play hers, and take her steps to free them from the nightmare they were in. She needed the truth from Levitt, but finding that truth - How could she outsmart someone who knew almost everything about her?

There were two options - use what he didn’t know, or use what he did but underestimated.

Octavia knew using what he _didn’t_ know was out of the question - she hadn’t shared certain things for a reason. Nothing about Skyring, save for that one stray memory, to protect Hope. Nothing about Madi either, because Levitt had been sniffing around the Flame since her earliest memory of it, and she was happy to let them keeping thinking it was in Clarke’s head to protect the child that she’d tried to protect from the damn thing in the first place, all those years ago.

Which meant that Blodreina was coming out to play, and Levitt had not been as afraid of her as he should have been.

Bardo wanted to know what perfect control looked like? She’d show them something far more terrifying than their simple lives could ever handle.

The knock sounded on her door. Her eyes opened.

It was showtime.

Octavia’s back was to the door, and she didn’t move from her place as it slid open, as it always did. She heard his steps coming into the room, the door close behind him.

“Octavia.”

When she didn’t react to his presence, Levitt tried again.

“Octavia, it’s me.”

Slowly, she got to her feet and turned to face him, expression impassive.

“Why are you here, Levitt?”

“You need someone. I know that can’t have been easy for you.”

“What can’t have been easy?”

“Killing Hope in the simulation. Seeing her fail, seeing Echo sentence her to Penance alone. You love her more than anything else in this universe, but you had to watch Echo speak those words to her and Disciples haul her away.”

“If you don’t feel, then how would you know that?”

“I’m sure you know by now that we _do_ feel, Octavia. We just don’t let our feelings control us.”

“Yet you’re here. Expecting that my feelings are controlling me.”

“I said you were at best a level 2.”

“If that’s what you think, you still have a lot to learn about emotions.”

“Then teach me.” Levitt stepped into her personal space, trailing his fingers up her arms the way she’d done to him that first night. “Show me more of your world.”

Levitt’s hands reached her shoulders, and he held them softly as he dipped his head to kiss down her neck. He walked them backward slowly, but before they could reach the bed, Octavia grabbed his hips and switched their positions, the backs of his knees hitting the edge of the bed, making him sit down.

She needed to be in control for what would come next.

Octavia slid into his lap as she had before, feeling him grow hard against her. His breath caught in his throat as she pressed herself up against him, his hands moving to her waist, gripping her hips to give himself the illusion that he had any control of how she rolled her hips against him.

“Please.” Levitt whispered against her neck. “Please let me in, Octavia. You feel so incredible, I - I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Sounds like you’re not a Level 11 anymore.” Octavia murmured into his ear, reaching down to pull his shirt off, scoring his skin with her fingernails as she tugged it over his head.

“I don’t care.” 

They made quick work of the rest of their clothes, and Levitt squeezed his eyes shut with a sharp moan as Octavia sank down onto him, his fingertips digging into her thighs as tried to hold her in place.

“Not so fast.” He panted as she moved on him, balancing her hands on his shoulders, pressing him down into the pillows.

Octavia slowed down her pace to an almost complete crawl, and she observed his face carefully as his eyes opened and he focused his entire attention on where their bodies were joined, watching with rapt fascination as his breath sped up.

This was her chance.

Octavia slammed her hips down, taking him fully inside, pinning him to the bed with her hips, clamping her internal muscles down on him at the same moment she brought a hand to his throat and _squeezed._

Levitt’s eyes shot up to meet hers in a panic, and she relaxed her handhold incrementally, now that she had his attention. She kept her face expressionless, years of experience coming to her aid.

To her surprise - though she didn’t show it - he smiled.

“Blodreina.” He whispered in awe. “She’s who you call on when you need emotional control.”

“I call on her for far more than that.”

“You don’t need her here.” Levitt rasped as Octavia tightened her grip again. “You can let go of that control with me.”

“Why?”

“You can trust me.”

“Why?” Octavia released her grip a tiny bit to let him breathe while speaking.

“When you first got here, I went easy on you when all of my superiors were telling me to just burn straight through your mind. I erased that memory of Hope. I helped you escape when Hope came for you, then I helped her. I told you how to beat the machine, how to beat the tests.”

“All a bit convenient, isn’t it?”

“You think I’m here _on orders?_ To find your weaknesses, is that it?”

“I’m not stupid. I know we’re being watched.”

“No one is seeing this. I promise. Every time before I come here, I go to the camera room and loop the footage for your room and the hallway outside.”

“You do, do you?”

“Yes.” Levitt said plaintively, eyes opening wide as she pressed her fingers around his throat again. “You can trust me.”

Octavia cocked her head as she observed him. He didn’t struggle, he kept his eyes on hers - and he was still turned on. He was still hard inside her. His eyes fluttered closed as he started to grow short on air, but then opened with a start as soon as she let him breathe again, focusing back on hers immediately, even as she pressed down again.

It was a good act. But she needed to be sure. She needed to see fear.

Blodreina smiled deep within her mind.

“So let me make this completely clear.” Octavia whispered, bringing her face close to his, her hair falling in a curtain around their faces as she looked deep into his eyes. “If you _have_ looped the footage, that means no one knows you’re here and I can do _anything_ to you and you can’t tell anyone. But if you _haven’t_ looped the footage and you _are_ here on orders, then someone else knows that you’ve gone _well_ beyond the call of duty here in my bed, asking me for sex, begging for me to feel, wanting me to show you how to feel. Does that sound about right?”

“Yes.” Levitt rasped. “You could march me to Anders right now and tell him everything and he’d have me executed on the spot. But I would still say it was worth it. Everything you’ve made me feel, it has been worth it.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.” Even though Octavia’s hand was still clamped around his throat, there was no trace of fear - or a lie - on his face as Levitt lifted one of his hands to Octavia’s cheek. “I choose you.”

“Choose.” Octavia scoffed, releasing her hold on him. “You won’t understand emotions until you understand free will. Because making a choice is not the same thing as free will.”

“I… I don’t understand.”

“You wouldn’t. So let’s go back to my memories. You remember the Dark Year?”

Levitt nodded. “Eat or die. It wasn’t a pretty choice, but you still gave them that choice. To save everyone.”

“And there’s the difference between choice and free will. People had the choice between eat human flesh or die. I had the choice between forcing resisters to eat human flesh by any means necessary or watching as all of my people starved to death. But neither of those choices were free. They all came with a heavy cost and consequence.”

“But it had to be done to survive.”

“But that doesn’t make it free. Just like this.” Octavia straightened up and took Levitt’s hand off her cheek, holding it between both of hers. “For the first time in your life, you’ve exercised free will, going against everything you’ve ever known. That must be exciting for you. But for me, this is a choice like many others I’ve had to make in my life. There’s nothing free about it. There _can’t_ be anything free about it, because I haven’t had any free will since I was brought to this planet. Your people kidnapped me from my home and ripped my family apart. You invaded my mind. Your people killed my brother and threatened the rest of my family with a slow solitary death if we didn’t join you and disavow all connection to each other.”

Levitt’s eyes widened as he finally started to understand the gravity of the situation they were in. He sat up slowly, lifting Octavia off of him. She sat down on the bed in front of him.

“I’m so sorry, Octavia.” Levitt said. “I - no. This isn’t about me. What do you need me to do?”

“Save her.” Octavia said simply. “Go to Penance, tell her the truth, and send her to Sanctum or a safe slow planet with a helmet so that she remembers everything. Tell her that her mother and I love her and that we’ll bring her home using her consciousness code when the war is over.”

“They haven’t sent Hope to Penance. They’re not going to. Psych evaluation deemed her too much of a risk to herself and others. She’s in a cell here where they can watch her.”

“Then rig as many cameras as you need to so that her mother and I can get in to see her.”

“Getting both of you there would take a few days, but -” Levitt’s eyes darted around the room for a moment, before stopping so that he could do some calculations in his head. “- I could get you there in less than an hour, assuming you’re still all right with tight spaces.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her cell is six floors directly below us. If you use the vents, all I need to do is leave the video loop on your room and add a video loop on her cell and you can go to her.”

“Do it.”

They both stood, collecting their clothes and getting dressed. Octavia went over to the vent in the wall, taking off the cover carefully and taking a look inside it. It was bigger than the space beneath the floor that she’d hid in throughout her childhood.

“Go now.” Levitt said. “When you get to her cell, you should be able to see the camera from your position in the vent. When the light switches from green to red, you’ll know it’s on a loop and you’re safe to enter. But take no more than an hour.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m just doing what I should have done from the start. Thank _you_ for helping me understand. Now go.”

Octavia crawled into the vent, pulling the cover back in place behind herself. She heard Levitt leave her room and the door close back behind him. She maneuvered into the vent heading down, and pressed her arms and legs carefully along the sides, inching her way down bit by bit. It had been years since she’d moved in a space like this, but muscle memory returned and she made her way down, dropping into the space next to Hope’s cell with a soft landing. She could see Hope curled up in a corner, sobbing into her knees, and ached to run to her, but the camera light was still green.

As soon as it turned red, Octavia’s hands were in the vent cover, pushing it out carefully, holding it one hand as she crawled out the vent and hung one-handed over the side before dropping the remaining feet to the floor, setting the cover to the side.

The clink of the vent cover against the wall was what got Hope’s attention, as her back straightened up and she turned to face the intruder in her cell.

Octavia’s heart broke as Hope’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Are you actually Aunty O or are you a robot like _them?”_ Hope asked with venom in her voice as she got to her feet.

“I’m so sorry, little one.” Octavia whispered, tears slipping down her face. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” Hope snarled. “Aren’t you supposed to _break your bonds?_ Isn’t that why you killed me in that fear simulation?”

“None of us believe that.”

“Then why did you do it? Why do you do their bidding?”

“To save all of us. I know it’s hard. It’s _so_ hard. And I know that’s not how we raised you, so it’s unfair to expect you to understand. But your mother, Echo and I have all had to do this before. Pretend to be something we’re not so that we can survive. Your mother and I never told you about those parts of our lives because - because you were too young, and maybe we wouldn’t have ever talked about them, because that’s not the world we wanted you to know. We wanted you to be happy and not carry the pain of our past with you.”

“Cat’s out of the bag on that one.”

“How much did Echo and Gabriel tell you?”

“You were a warrior who united the clans but cast Echo out of the bunker because she’d cheated in the Conclave and been banished by her king. Then six years later you banished her again while you ruled over Wonkru with an iron fist. She tried to help you win that war against Mom despite that. Then you ended up in the forests of Sanctum with Mom because you’d both been exiled and that’s what led you to the Anomaly.”

“That’s fair.” 

“I’m not judging your past.” Hope said. “I told Mom the same thing. I just don’t understand why you’re - why you’re going along with their bullshit. You do know it is bullshit, right?”

“Of course I do. But we’re going along with it because this is how we survive for now. It won’t be forever.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they want Clarke. And soon enough, she’ll turn up here. She always does. When that happens, whatever this war of theirs is, we’ll know the truth of it and then soon enough it will also be over. Then we can go home.”

“Home. Right. Where even is that anymore?”

“Home is wherever our family is together.” Octavia stepped closer to Hope, raising her hand to cup her cheek and she was glad when Hope didn’t flinch away. “And we need you to survive for that to happen. We love you so much, little one, and when that door opens, we need you to pretend to be the perfect Disciple. I know you want to fight them and I understand that, believe me I do, but fighting them while we don’t have any leverage - none of us will get out of here alive. Do you remember the night they took your mother and me away?”

“Of course I do. That night has haunted my nightmares for fifteen years.”

“What did I tell you when I was hiding you?”

“I had to stay quiet and be brave, no matter what I heard. And you and Mom would come back for me.” Hope’s bottom lip trembled. “But you didn’t. They took you away and would’ve never let you go. They still won’t let you go. We’re still not free.”

“I know, little one. I know. I’m so sorry.” Octavia pulled Hope into a hug and was relieved when she threw her arms around her too, sobbing into Octavia’s shoulder. “But you still have to stay quiet and be brave, just like I told you that night. Only now you have to do it surrounded by a lot of people you hate. I know it’s not easy, but it is the only way we’ll ever be free again. It’s the only way we’ll ever be able to go home.”

“I - I don’t know how I’m just supposed to flip a - a switch like that, go from hating everything they stand for to pretending to be one of them. _Fifteen years,_ Aunty O. That’s how much time I spent fighting them in my mind.”

“I know. I know flipping a switch where everything is different practically overnight is not easy. Especially after so much pain.” Octavia rested her forehead against Hope’s, rubbing her tears away with her thumb. “I’ve been there. No one understood how hard it was for me, and - and all of that, that’s what brought us here. When we’re out of here I’ll tell you the whole story. Just right now, know that I do understand, I love you, and I am still so so proud of you. So please try. For all of us. Don’t let them rob us of more than they already have.”

“Okay. I’ll try.”

“Thank you.” Octavia kissed Hope’s forehead and stepped back, looking up at the camera, where the light was thankfully still red. “I have to go now.”

“Did Levitt help you get here?”

“He did. He looped the cameras.”

“You trust that?”

“I wasn’t sure at first, but I am now. I made sure he was on our side.”

“Should I ask?”

“Not right now. Just help me get back into that vent.”

Hope boosted Octavia back up to the vent, and handed her the cover.

“I love you, little one. Don’t you ever forget that. Be brave and our family will be together again soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "My Transition" and "Amaranthine" by Amaranthe.


End file.
